Moho is doing my nut in.

[Khrissetti]

The planet of Moho seems to represent Utopia for my kerbals in that it's incredibly difficult to get to and if you go there you're unlikely to return. In fact, an entire kerbal mythology is building up with the premise that if you are a good kerbal in life, you go to Moho when you die.

I built a ship consisting of four orange tanks with nuclear drives which, in testing, had enough fuel to lower its orbit to Moho's, circularise, and stretch the orbit back out until somewhere near Jool. When it actually came to doing it, I'd finished off three of the orange tanks by the time I'd got an encounter, then wasted the last of my fuel burning to circularise in Moho orbit.

I burned at roughly the correct ejection angle so that my orbit was reduced when I entered the sun's SOI, I lowered my orbit to Moho's Apoapsis, I changed my inclination at the nodes, then I came in on Moho's inside to try and shed some velocity through the slingshot maneuver.

Does anybody havbe any idea what I might have done wrong, or simply any tips for getting to Heaven Moho and returning?

Edited October 11, 2013 by Khrissetti

[bsalis]

Hmm, you just need a lot of delta-V. There is no real way around that. Whatever the delta-V map says for Moho should be taken with a grain of salt.

One thing you might want to try is what I did for my last mission there. I ignored the transfer window, and left Kerbin when it was at the ascending node. Setting the Pe down to intersect with Moho orbit at its descending node. It doesn't matter which node you use, leaving at descending is the same. At the solar Pe, i did a retro burn to change my arrival time back at Pe to rendezvous with Moho. By doing this i have a) spent nothing on an inclination change and reduced my rendezvous velocity a bit to make the orbit braking burn a little more manageable.

If you do this, play around with maneuver nodes first to make sure that this burn at solar Pe does not lower the Ap too low.... if the Ap falls within the orbit of Moho then that is a waste. Warp around to the next ascending/descending node and try again.

[Xiphos]

I think your main issue is your ship is way too large. Try a single man pod, one FL-300 tank and the nuclear engine. (I think it's called the FL-300 it's the one with 360L of fuel. You'd be surprised what you can do with just that small ship. If your main ship could push a small ship like that to an intercept with moho, that small ship could do the rest I'm sure. And try to use the Skipper engine for your transfer burn. That engine is powerful and efficient you'll only have like a 2 minute burn at most. Good luck if you're still having problems I can post some pics tonight.

[Rage097]

The planet of Moho seems to represent Utopia for my kerbals in that it's incredibly difficult to get to and if you go there you're unlikely to return. In fact, an entire kerbal mythology is building up with the premise that if you are a good kerbal in life, you go to Moho when you die.

I always thought Moho was more of a hellish world and Laythe was a heaven. Ah well.

But yeah, you need LOTS of Delta-V to get to Moho.

[wasmic]

I always thought Moho was more of a hellish world and Laythe was a heaven. Ah well.

But yeah, you need LOTS of Delta-V to get to Moho.

Of course Moho is a heavenish world. It's full of fire, right?

[capi3101]

I designed this a week or two ago for somebody on these forums who wanted to do a Moho flyby:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

(This was before I found out you could assign crew from the VAB, incidentally).

Payload's maybe 25 tonnes, has about 10,000 m/s of delta V and it'll carry three Kerbals on a Moho flyby. I did a redesign for myself that swapped out the big chute on the end with a clamp-o-tron and added two radial chutes - the idea being to send a separate lander ahead, dock the two in orbit and conduct a surface excursion. The extra equipment cost about 100 m/s of delta-V.

Come to think of it, it occurs to me that I never heard whether or not that design worked...

[Khrissetti]

Well, I got him home, but I admit I did have to use the infinite fuel cheat to finish the flight off (Had enough fuel left to raise my Ap to kerbin's not enough to change inclination.) I'm not putting the 'returned from...' label on my ribbons, but I did at least manage to oput a kerbal on Moho and return them to orbit, if nothing else. Thanks for all the advice, but I think it'll be a long time until I return to that irritating worldlet.

[Khrissetti]

Here's the Honolulu's mission:

Launching for the great beyond

Arriving in Moho orbit - boosters abandoned

Landed! Note to self - next time use longer legs!

Planting the flag

Back in orbit, every last drop of fuel wrung out of the lander

[Pieman2201]

In fact, an entire kerbal mythology is building up with the premise that if you are a good kerbal in life, you go to Moho when you die.

[Pieman2201]

You don't go to Moho when you die, you die when you go to Moho

[bludy]

i worked on a mission on moho during the whole weekend..originally it was for lathye then seen the huge amount of dV i decided to try for moho.

it consisted of:

a) lander, one manned;

refueler docked to lander in HKO, since i've been greedy on launching that stage;

c) lifter with a three men capsule(1 empty seat :-D) docked to the lander in HKO;

d) additional orange tank to refuel the lifter and, remaining attached, providing extra fuel and extra thrust on the aircraft (2 more nuclear engines);

so far so good..

then i managed to end in moho orbit with not enough fuel to do anything else, let alone landing, so i designed an interplanetary refueling mission, which i managed to dock with something like 700-800 liquid fuel to fill a total amount of 2000 in the lifter and 1000 in the lander.

i've done a second refueling mission with a different design, which came with even less fuel, but i should start the landing operation next weekend, also redocking the staged lander(pod and science junior) to properly revalue the dV the ship has..i think i'll need a third refuel even if i manage to save something from the lander before undocking its body.

[Vector]

Practice gravity assists.

Get good at gravity assists.

Kerbin to Moho and Moho back to Kerbin are both much cheaper using an Eve assist.

[WafflesToo]

You don't go to Moho when you die, you die when you go to Moho

You say potato, I say potahto...

[DrMonte]

I think usually people does not evaluate that getting to Moho might require the same dV as getting to the Jools moon. It's difficult to get gravity or aerobreaking assist in the way to Moho.

So if you'll have a craft capable to get to Jool it will do for Moho too.